Protecting your dog from the cold weather: Winter safety tips
Learn about the dangers of keeping dogs outside in cold weather and essential tips to keep them safe and comfortable during winter.
The big cold front moving into the Great Lakes region, leading to heavy snow in some areas, high winds and gale warnings on the Great Lakes, is also expected to cause a storm surge on Lake Erie − a phenomenon that can leave shoreline locations looking like the lake drained away.
“This is going to be one of the strongest ones we have had in a while, where there could be 3 to 4 feet of water pushed from the western basin of Lake Erie to the east,” said David Marsalek, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland.
Jet Express Ferry to Put-in-Bay, Kelleys Island & Cedar Point, based in Port Clinton, Ohio, on its Facebook page Wednesday, Nov. 26, posted photos showing the Lake Erie waterline had significantly receded, with a large expanse of nothing but wet sand where the lake once was.
The forecast called for gale warnings on Lake Erie with winds of 35 to 40 knots, or 40 to 46 mph. The winds are out of the southwest, which is conducive to pushing water out of western Lake Erie, Marsalek said.
“When you look at Lake Erie and how it’s oriented, it’s west-southwest to east-northeast,” he said. “Essentially, the strong wind is pushing water out of the western basin of the lake toward the eastern basin.”
A low water advisory is in effect on western Lake Erie until 4 a.m. Friday, Nov. 28.
“That’s for any navigational interest,” Marsalek said. “Depending on how much a vessel requires for depth, the water levels dropping can be an issue.”
Meanwhile, the storm surge adding water to eastern Lake Erie has the forecast out of Buffalo calls for waves building up to 24 feet.
Jay Austin, a professor of physics and astronomy with the University of Minnesota-Duluth, has studied water displacement and seiches on the Great Lakes.
“The effectiveness of the wind to create these large coastal displacements is a function of how deep the lake is,” he said. “Shallow lakes are more prone to that than a deep lake like Superior or Ontario.”
The pushing of water from one side of an enclosed water body to another, and then its return, can sometimes form a seiche (pronounced “saysh”) – creating a large wave on the coast with the fast-returning water similar to water sloshing in a bathtub. A seiche on Lake Michigan created a rogue, 10-foot wave that swept eight people off of piers in Chicago to their deaths on June 26, 1954.
But Marsalek said a seiche is not expected with the current weather.
“We expect the winds will gradually decrease and change direction over time,” he said. “It will take a little bit of time for the water to come back to the western basin of the lake.”
Contact Keith Matheny: kmatheny@freepress.com.
